Discontinuity
by Zebediah
Summary: Daniel Faraday has come unstuck in time. But so has everybody else on the Island. Can the castaways survive the complete collapse of time and space? Follows season 4. COMPLETE
1. Prologue

**Discontinuity**

_**Prologue**_

The old man sat in the shade by the edge of the beach, idly swatting insects. The tropical sun was fiercely bright, and the white sands shimmered in the hot afternoon air. There was no sound but the breaking of the waves and the occasional call of a bird.

And then, faintly, the old man heard the buzzing of an airplane engine. The old man looked skywards, trying to spot the source of the noise. He shaded his right eye with his hand to block the glare from the sand; his left eye was hidden beneath a rough eye patch.

The drone of the propeller faded into silence. The old man swore, and spat on the sand.

Then he saw a white shape in the sky, growing slowly larger. He peered at it intently, and used a stout stick to haul himself erect. He stood on his right foot – his left leg ended six inches below the knee – and used the stick to balance himself.

He squinted, trying to focus his eye on the distant shape. Finally he saw it clearly, and grunted. It was a parachute, with a human shape suspended below it.

He watched its lazy descent, not taking his eyes off of it until the parachutist landed on the beach about fifty yards away. The nylon fabric of the parachute came down squarely atop the unknown parachutist, and the old man watched as the stranger struggled to get free of the entangling fabric.

The old man swore again, and began hobbling down the beach, using the stick as a crude crutch. When he reached the parachute, he leaned down, grabbed the fabric in his hands, and hauled it off of the struggling figure.

The parachutist looked up at the old man, and both of them froze, paralyzed by incomprehension. Then the old man snarled, "Sonofabitch! _Jack?_"

Jack Shepherd stared at the other man in shock. The old man looked to be about sixty years old. He had a balding head fringed with tangled gray hair, a matted beard reaching his chest, and was dressed entirely in rags. The left side of his face was marred by a trio of ugly parallel scars that reached from his forehead to his jawbone; one of the scars crossed his hidden left eye socket.

But in spite of the man's age and disfigurement, Jack knew him.

"Sawyer?" he asked, barely able to believe what he was seeing.

_-- Discontinuity --_


	2. Chapter 1: Things Have Changed

**Chapter 1 - _Things Have Changed_**

Daniel Faraday steered the overloaded Zodiac towards the island, struggling to keep it on course. He'd picked up as many survivors of the ship's explosion as he could, and the inflatable raft was barely keeping itself above water. There were ten people aboard the raft itself, and another fifteen in the water around it, clinging to the sides.

It was slow going. Daniel estimated they were making about half a knot through the water, barely enough to fight the current. But slowly they were making headway towards the beach. If the Zodiac's fuel held out, they would be ashore within half an hour.

That estimate also depended upon Daniel's ability to keep the raft on course. If he deviated even a little bit, it could take much, much longer. Or potentially shorter – there was a small but nonzero chance that the raft had, in fact, already landed. Time did peculiar and unpredictable things around this island, and it did even more unpredictable things around Daniel.

And then there was a strange humming noise. Daniel looked up in alarm, but was unable to locate the source – it seemed to be coming from all around them. It felt as if his very bones were vibrating.

Then there was a blinding flash of light –

_-- Discontinuity --_

– and he found himself seated on a comfortable sofa in a pleasantly furnished room.

"What the hell?" he said.

"What's that, luv?" a voice said from behind him.

Daniel turned, and saw, standing in a doorway, a woman with intense blue eyes and long red hair. She was smiling at him, holding a dishtowel in one hand. She was also visibly pregnant.

"Charlotte?" he asked. "What… how…"

Charlotte's expression grew concerned, and she walked over to sit next to him on the sofa. "It's all right, luv," she said gently, taking his hand. "It's happened before. It will pass."

A young girl's voice called out from the other room, "Is Daddy having another epsisode?"

Daniel turned towards the voice. A young girl, about five years old, with pale freckled skin and straight reddish-brown hair, stood in the doorway, watching them. "Episode, dearest," Charlotte answered. "It's all right, I'll talk him down."

"Oh," the girl said nonchalantly. "Can I go outside and play on the swings, then?"

"Is there anyone else out there?" Charlotte asked.

"Vincent's there," the girl replied.

"Okay then," Charlotte said. "But stay close. And if Vincent starts barking, come back inside as quick as you can."

"Okay Mommy," the girl said, and ran off.

Daniel blinked. "She's… ours?"

Charlotte pursed her lips. "Oh my, you have gone back quite a bit, haven't you?"

"I guess so," Daniel agreed. "Does this happen to me often?"

"You mean the temporal discontinuity episodes?" Charlotte asked. "All the time. And not just to you, either. We all have them now. Whatever Ben Linus did to the island – well, things have changed quite a bit around here."

"What happened, exactly?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"I was on the Zodiac, taking people towards the freighter," Daniel explained. "There was an explosion…"

Charlotte nodded. "I remember, luv," she said. "I don't think any of us are going to forget that day."

"But I don't remember making it back to the island." Daniel continued. "Though apparently I did."

"Oh, you most certainly did," Charlotte agreed. "I was so worried – I was afraid you'd been killed. Then I saw you bringing the raft back…"

"Then what happened?" Daniel asked.

"Well, I think that was the night you knocked me up with Annie," Charlotte said with an impish grin.

"I did?" Daniel said. Then he looked down at her swollen belly. "Looks like that wasn't the only time, either."

"Oh, no," Charlotte said. "Far from it, you lecherous beast!" She giggled. "Juliet says this one is a boy."

"Juliet…" Daniel said. "So we're still on the island?"

Charlotte nodded. "It's the old Dharma Initiative compound. We moved here after Locke's people moved out," she explained. "Sawyer calls it New Otherton."

"But Juliet said that women couldn't have children on this island…"

Charlotte smiled. "Things changed, luv," she told him. "Annie was the first baby Juliet ever delivered on this island. But there have been plenty more since then."

Daniel laughed, and reached his hands out towards Charlotte's belly. Charlotte took his hands in hers and pressed them up against the firm bulge of the baby inside her.

"Wow," Daniel said, feeling light-headed. "This is… incredible!"

"What, you never thought you'd wind up living a life of happy domesticity on a nameless tropical island that's infested with polar bears?" Charlotte said mock-seriously. "Why, isn't that what everyone dreams of?"

Daniel smiled at Charlotte and said, "So we're happy, then?"

Charlotte gave Daniel a fond smile. "Of course we are, my love. And never mind the polar bears, or the odd bit of wandering about through time. Every marriage has its challenges. Ours are just a bit – unique."

"That's…" Daniel hesitated, uncertain about what he was about to say. "Wonderful," he found himself saying.

Charlotte leaned close and whispered, "Would you like to go back to the bedroom and see just how wonderful it is?"

Daniel blinked, looking down at her belly, and said, "It won't… hurt anything, will it?"

Charlotte laughed. "Oh no, luv. Not a bit."

Then, from outside, they heard the sound of a dog barking loudly. Charlotte's eyes widened, and she stood up. "Oh God, no," she breathed, and ran towards the door. "Annie?" she called. And then she screamed, _"Annie! No…"_

_-- Discontinuity --_

The Zodiac's bottom hit the sand, and Daniel and the other passengers leapt out and dragged the boat to shore.

Charlotte Lewis felt as if a giant hand that had been squeezing her heart in an iron vise for the last few hours suddenly let go. She walked down the sand towards Daniel, feeling a rush of emotion for the tall, lanky physicist. She hadn't realized until she'd seen the explosion of the freighter how much she cared for him.

Now she wanted to laugh. She wanted to fall to her knees and cry. She wanted to drag Daniel into the jungle and rip his clothes off and make love to him for hours.

She settled for running down the beach into Daniel's arms and giving him a long, passionate kiss. There would be time enough for the rest later.

_-- Discontinuity --_

Kate Austin listened to the drone of the plane's engines and wondered, for the thousandth time, what the hell she was doing aboard it.

The old DC-3 had taken off from New Guinea eight hours earlier, just before dawn, and had headed out to sea. They had been flying over open ocean without sight of land for hours, and Kate had no idea how much longer they had. Luckily, Aaron had decided to take a nap, and had been asleep for the past hour.

She looked around at her fellow passengers. Once before they had all been on the same airplane, and it hadn't exactly turned out well for any of them.

Sun stared straight ahead, having barely exchanged a word with any of the others since meeting them the day before. Hugo, on the other hand, seemed fully relaxed, reading a comic book. Sayid busied himself with checking the parachutes, while Jack peered out the small windows at the horizon.

Only Walt would look her in the face. And Walt had insisted on sitting atop the coffin for the entire flight.

Then Ben Linus, in the pilot's seat, called back to them, "We're almost there. You'd better get ready."

"I don't see anything," Jack countered.

"You won't, until we're right on top of it," Ben explained. "It's there, don't worry."

Sayid helped her into her jumpsuit and parachute, and then helped strap Aaron to her chest. He had volunteered to be the one to jump with Aaron, but Kate had refused, and he hadn't pressed the issue. He gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder and said, "It will be all right, Kate."

Kate nodded. "I just wish I knew why I was even here. I don't know how Ben talked me into this."

"Yes, you do," Ben called back to her. "Hold on tight, there's going to be a bit of a bump here…"

The plane seemed to hit a pothole in the sky, bouncing them all out of their seats. But then it settled down to level flight again.

"There it is!" Ben shouted.

Kate glanced out the window, catching sight of a familiar volcanic peak. "Great, let's do this, then."

Sayid sat down next to Walt, and said, "Are you sure about this? You don't have to do this."

"Yes, I do," Walt insisted.

"You at least have the choice," Ben called back. "God, I envy you so much."

"Shut up," Sun said curtly.

"Coming up on the drop zone," Ben announced. "Sayid, get the door open."

Sayid opened up a large hatch in the side of the aircraft. "Ready, Hugo?" he asked.

Hugo nodded, and the two men pushed the coffin out of the hatch. A trailing cord pulled the coffin's parachute, and the box containing the body of the man who somehow both had and had not been John Locke floated towards the land below.

Sayid nodded. "Let's go!"

Hugo went out the door first, followed closely by Walt. Sun spared a moment to give Ben a hateful look before she jumped. Then Sayid jumped after her.

Kate gave Jack a long stare. "Go!" Jack shouted. "I'm right behind you!"

She took a breath, put one arm around Aaron, and jumped from the plane.

She'd taken a class in parachuting in Los Angeles, so she knew what she was doing. She counted to twenty before pulling her ripcord, and her chute blossomed above her, decelerating her and Aaron with a fierce jerk. She steered the chute towards the beach as she dropped, watching the four parachutes in front of her. She flared her chute as she neared the ground, and dropped to a perfect landing on the hot sand. Her chute blew ahead of her onto the beach, and she hit the quick-release catches before it pulled her over.

As she pulled off her helmet and needlessly comforted the not-at-all terrified Aaron, she saw a dozen people come running down the beach towards her. Within a minute, she was surrounded by a crowd of familiar faces, all giving her excited greetings. Rose gave Walt a fierce hug, and Bernard pounded Sayid on the back. Meanwhile, Hugo was nearly suffocating Juliet in a tremendous bear hug, Daniel Faraday stood scratching his head and staring at Aaron, and Sun was speaking intently to an extremely pregnant Charlotte Lewis.

Then another figure came running at full speed down the beach towards her. Before she could react, Sawyer swept Kate up into his arms and gave her a long, passionate kiss.

Then she heard Juliet ask, "Where's Jack?"

The parachutists looked around in confusion. "Didn't he jump?" Hugo asked.

"He was supposed to be behind me," Kate said.

"He was," Sayid insisted. "I saw him."

Kate stared up at the sky, searching for an errant parachute. "Where did he go?" she asked.

_-- Discontinuity --_


	3. Chapter 2: Unstuck in Time

**Chapter 2 – **_**Unstuck in Time**_

As Sawyer led Jack up the beach, Jack asked, "What the hell happened to you?"

Sawyer stopped, and leaned on his stick. "Polar bear," he explained. "Big one. I shot it, but it tore me up pretty bad before it died. Juliet stitched me up the best she could, but…" He shrugged, and resumed hobbling up the beach.

"That explains the eye and the foot," Jack agreed. "But you look old, Sawyer."

"Hell, Jack, I _am_ old," Sawyer snarled. "Don't you get it?"

Jack stopped. "No, I don't," he said. "What don't I get?"

"So aren't you wondering where Kate and the rest of them are? You all came on the same plane, right?"

"Yeah, we did," Jack answered. "But there was this crosswind that caught my chute and carried me away from the rest of them. They must have landed a few miles up the beach."

"Uh-huh," Sawyer growled. "But the part that you don't get is that they landed there over twenty years ago."

Jack stopped in his tracks. "That's not possible," he said.

Sawyer shook his head. "Jack, listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time."

"What?"

"It's from _Slaughterhouse Five_," Sawyer snapped. "Don't you read?"

"Yeah, I read it in high school," Jack said. "But you can't expect me to believe…"

"Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time," Sawyer repeated. "And me, and everybody else on this damned island. Some days I don't know if it's next week or a dozen years ago. Oh, and you too, Pilgrim," he added. "Looks like you skipped a couple of decades."

"So where is Kate, then?" Jack asked. "And everyone else?"

"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee," Sawyer quoted.

_-- Discontinuity --_

Bernard Nadler blinked, and sat down heavily in a chair. One minute he'd been on the beach; the next, he was in what looked like a suburban doctor's office. He had no idea how he'd gotten there. But neither Rose nor Juliet seemed to notice his confusion.

"At _my_ age?" Rose said, incredulous.

Juliet nodded, and pointed at the ultrasound monitor. "It's pretty clear," she said. "I'd estimate that you're about ten weeks along."

"Are you hearing this, husband?" Rose asked.

"I…" Bernard began, and then stopped.

Rose narrowed her eyes and stared at him. "Are you just in shock, or are you having an episode?"

"Episode?" he repeated, still confused.

Rose slapped him on the arm. "A fine time you picked for your memory to go wandering off into the wild blue. What do you remember?"

"We were on the beach," he explained, "helping the people Daniel rescued…"

"Almost a year, then," Juliet said quietly.

"Huh?" Bernard asked.

"Don't worry, you'll remember it all soon," Juliet assured him. "This has been happening to all of us."

"This is crazy," Rose protested. "I'm fifty-one years old. How in the name of God can I be pregnant?"

"What? _Pregnant?_" Bernard sputtered.

"Oh, be quiet," Rose ordered.

Juliet smiled. "It's something about this island," she explained. "I've always measured spectacularly high sperm counts in the men here. And now that whatever was complicating the pregnancies is gone…" She grinned. "It looks like we're all going to have to be careful. I'm not sure birth control pills are going to work all that well any more."

"I'm going to be a father?" Bernard asked.

Juliet took his hand, and said, "Congratulations, Mr. Nadler. You're a father."

"And I am too old for this," Rose muttered.

Bernard opened his mouth to reply –

_-- Discontinuity --_

– and then he was back on the beach.

"Hey, Bernard, are you okay?" he heard Daniel ask.

"Uh…" Bernard hesitated. "I think so, yeah."

"You looked like you were somewhere else."

"I was," he admitted.

Daniel gave him a knowing look. "Past or future?"

"The future."

Daniel nodded. "I thought so. What was happening?"

"Rose was pregnant."

"Rose was with you?"

"Yeah, she was."

"You'll be all right, then," Daniel assured him.

"Bernard, over here!" Charlotte called out. "This one's pretty bad."

Many of the survivors of the freighter explosion were badly burned, and having spent four hours in the water afterwards hadn't helped. At least four of them had life-threatening injuries, as far as Bernard could tell. But he was a dentist, and didn't have much experience with second and third degree burns. "Has anybody seen Juliet?" he asked.

Miles spoke up. "I saw her, yeah," he said. "But I don't think she'll be much use to you. She drank almost a whole bottle of rum by herself. She's pretty wasted."

"Fine time to get drunk," Bernard muttered, and got back to work.

_-- Discontinuity --_

Juliet Burke raised the plastic jar to her mouth and took a long drink. The jar had, once upon a time, held a gallon of Dharma Initiative mayonnaise. More recently, it had held a gallon of Sawyer's potent moonshine. It was nearly empty now, and Juliet was determined to finish it off. She wasn't worried about what would happen then. Sawyer always had more.

She was sitting in the dilapidated tent that she had called home for the past eight months. It had once been Jack's, and after the freighter explosion, nobody had objected when Juliet had decided to claim it as her own. It was the last connection she had to the man she so desperately tried not to think about that she drank herself into unconsciousness every night.

She had, for a moment, allowed herself to hope when she saw the parachutes floating down towards the beach that morning. But the Island had, once again, snatched her hope away from her. It wasn't going to let her have Jack.

So be it. She still had Sawyer's moonshine. Besides, when she was drunk, she never experienced any temporal discontinuities. Daniel had tried to explain it to her, but it had gone over her head. But when she was drunk, she remain firmly rooted in the present, which was fine with her. She didn't care enough about the future to know what it contained.

Sun pulled open the curtain that served as a door to Juliet's tent, and without preamble, said "Charlotte is eight months pregnant."

"Hi, Sun," Juliet said breezily. "Come on in. Can I get you a drink?"

Sun wrinkled her nose. "You're drunk," she said in a disapproving tone.

"Mm-hmm," Juliet agreed. "It makes this place a hell of a lot easier to deal with, let me tell you. You ought to try it some time."

"How is this possible?" Sun demanded.

"Sawyer rigged up a still," Juliet explained. "He ferments mango juice, and then distills it. It's not the smoothest stuff, but after the first drink you don't really give a damn. Here, have some," she said, holding up the large plastic jar.

"What? No, not the alcohol," Sun snapped. "How is it possible that Charlotte is still alive?"

"Oh, that," Juliet said. "Something changed, Sun. Whatever was killing all the mothers – isn't doing it any more."

"What changed?"

"I don't know for sure," Juliet answered. "But I think it must have been the Swan station."

"You mean the hatch?"

"Yeah, Jack said that's what you all called it." Juliet took a drink of moonshine, and said, "It should have been obvious. The pregnancies started going bad after the Dharma Initiative built the Swan station. So when Desmond blew it up…"

Sun gave Juliet a murderous glare. "Does this mean that I didn't have to leave?"

"I don't know, Sun." Juliet put down her jug. "You were pregnant while the Swan was still operational. I don't know what would have happened."

"But I might have been fine?"

"Maybe," Juliet said. "I don't know."

"So I didn't need to leave the island?"

"I told you, Sun, I just don't know."

Sun abruptly raised her hand and struck Juliet, hard, across her face. Juliet saw stars, and tasted blood. "My husband is dead because you told us I had to get off this island!" Sun hissed.

Juliet put a hand to her bloodied mouth, but her expression was sorrowful. "Oh Sun, didn't anyone tell you?"

Sun stared at her. "Tell me what?"

"Jin isn't dead."

Sun's eyes went wide, and she was speechless for a moment. Then, in a quiet voice, she asked, "Where is he?"

"He went to live with Locke's people about six months ago."


	4. Chapter 3: What Should Have Happened

**Chapter 3 – **_**What Should Have Happened**_

Hugo was never quite sure what prompted him to sleep on the beach the night of his return to the Island. He just hadn't felt comfortable among the many mysteries back at the camp, and at the questions that surrounded everything. He'd been away for years – although the castaways on the beach insisted that it had only been eight months by their reckoning – and yet, it felt as if he'd never left this place.

So he'd wandered off on his own, until he reached the small cove where he and Libby had planned to have their first date. A date that had been cut short by her brutal murder. Hugo simply sat down on the sand and stared out over the empty ocean. Eventually he fell asleep.

But when he woke the next morning, he wasn't alone.

Somebody was snuggled up next to him, with an arm across his chest and one leg stretched familiarly atop him. She was warm, and agreeably female. And, like him, she was completely naked.

"Whoa," Hugo exclaimed.

She woke then, and looked affectionately into his eyes. "Good morning, Hugo," she whispered.

"Libby?" he whispered back.

"Shhh," she whispered, laying her head down on his chest. "Mmm, last night was good."

"But…" Hugo began.

"Shhh," she whispered again. "Don't question it, Hugo. It's what was meant to be."

"But…" Hugo shook his head. "Libby, this can't be happening."

"But it is," she whispered back.

"But this never happened," he protested.

"But it should have," Libby whispered, clutching him tightly. "Oh, it should have."

"Libby…" Hugo said helplessly. "You… died."

She lifted her head and looked into his eyes again. "But I wasn't supposed to, Hugo," she said. "A lot of things happened that weren't supposed to. A lot of things didn't happen that should have." She reached a hand up to stroke his beard. "This was how it was supposed to be."

"But how…" Hugo began.

"No, don't question it, Hugo," Libby said, placing her hand across his lips to silence him. "Just accept it." She pulled herself up, straddling him, and lowered herself down on top of him. "Just… ooohh… accept it…" she whispered, and began rocking gently back and forth.

Hugo didn't ask any more questions. He knew that it was totally insane, but he didn't have a problem with that. He could accept being crazy if this was what it got him.

_-- Discontinuity --_

Sawyer's hut was made of old, weathered logs and a few battered and sandblasted pieces of aircraft fuselage. It looked as if it had been there for decades – which it had been, if what Sawyer had told Jack was true. And if Jack couldn't believe that evidence, then there was the matter of Sawyer's scars, which were genuine and looked to be many years old.

And yet Jack knew it was impossible. He refused to accept it.

"So, everyone else is dead," Jack said, seated on the sand inside the tiny shack.

"Well, mostly," Sawyer hedged. "Aaron is still alive."

"He is?" Jack said, suddenly more interested.

"And Daniel Faraday. And a bunch of the kids, too. There's a few others I'm not sure about – I haven't been up to New Otherton for years."

"Kids?" Jack asked.

Sawyer nodded. "A few people had kids. Daniel and Charlotte had two kids - their son is still around. I think he's sleeping with Rose and Bernard's daughter."

"Wait – _Rose_ had a baby?"

"Sure did," Sawyer confirmed. "Don't know if there was anyone more surprised about it than she was, either. Oh and, Juliet had a daughter too, but she never did let on who the father was."

"Hm," Jack grunted. "And you have no idea?"

Sawyer shook his head. "Nope. Wasn't me, that's all I can be sure about."

Jack scowled, and looked down at the sand. "How about that," he mumbled.

"Not that I didn't have the chance, you understand," Sawyer continued. "One night not too long after all of you flew off in the chopper, she came to me and said I could pretend she was Kate if she could pretend that I was you." Sawyer gave a wry grin. "For some reason, I just didn't think it was that great a deal for me."

"_Juliet_ propositioned you," Jack said skeptically.

"Yeah, well, she was drunk," Sawyer admitted.

"So what happened to her?"

"Kate found her in the jungle, dead," Sawyer said, and he grimaced. "Murdered. Never figured out who did it or why, either."

"What about the others?" Jack asked. "Kate?"

"Suicide."

"Hugo?"

"Wandered off down the beach one day and we never saw him again."

"Sayid?"

"Heart attack."

"Sun?"

"Polar bear." Sawyer pointed to his eye patch. "Same one that damn near did me in, in fact."

Jack shook his head sadly. "That's not how it was supposed to turn out," he said softly.

"Yeah, well, you weren't there, were you?" Sawyer said. "Maybe if you'd been there it would have gone different."

"What about Walt?" Jack asked.

"Well now, that one takes a little bit of explanation," Sawyer said. "You see –" He stopped abruptly, a confused look on his face. He grabbed tightly to his walking stick and said, "Whoa."

"What's going on?" Jack asked.

Sawyer looked slightly seasick. "Over the years I've gotten pretty good at knowing when these little jumps through time are coming," he said. "One's coming for me right about…"

_-- Discontinuity --_

"… now," Sawyer said.

He was lying on his back in Juliet's tent. Pain struck him suddenly, making him scream incoherently.

"Damn, he woke up," Bernard said. "Where's Juliet?"

"I'm here," he heard Juliet say. Sawyer's vision was blurry, and from his left eye he only got excruciatingly painful purple flashes that seemed to match his heartbeat. "What the hell happened?"

"A polar bear," he heard Sayid say. "We were looking for Sun. I think she was on her way to the Dharma compound. We found her – what was left of her anyway, after the bear was done with her. The bear charged Sawyer, but he stood his ground so that the rest of us could get away."

"You mean so that Kate could get away," Juliet retorted.

"Enough of that," Bernard snapped. "Are you sober enough to stitch him up?"

"He's going to need more than stitching up," Juliet said. "God, that eye is a mess. I doubt I can save it. The foot's going to have to go, for sure. But I can do it. First thing, we need to get the wounds cleaned and disinfected."

"Jack," Sawyer whispered hoarsely.

"What? Jack's not here," Juliet said. "Hold still."

"Future," Sawyer said as loud as he could.

"What? What about Jack?" he heard Kate ask.

"Not now, Kate," Bernard said.

"Twenty –" Sawyer began, and then coughed. "Twenty-two or twenty-three years. I lost count. But he's there. In the future."

"Tell it to Daniel after we get you fixed up," Bernard ordered. "Maybe he can make sense of it. Now hold still," he said, holding up a rag and a bottle of Sawyer's moonshine. "I'm going to clean that wound. It's going to hurt like hell."

Sawyer felt the alcohol splash onto his face, and his wounds flared in fresh agony. He screamed –

_-- Discontinuity --_

– and he was back in his shack.

"Sawyer?" he heard Jack saying. "What's happening?"

"Oh, God, that was a bad one," Sawyer said, pulling himself to a sitting position.

"What happened?"

"I told you," Sawyer said. "I get these weird episodes where I jump around though time. Everyone who was on the Island when Ben did whatever the hell it was he did has them. Daniel tried to explain it to me, but it didn't make much sense."

"So you went back through time," Jack prompted.

"Yeah, I did," Sawyer said. "I told them where you were, too. So at least they know what happened to you."

"And Daniel knows what's going on," Jack said.

"He says he does, yeah," Sawyer said. "He also says he was having these episodes even before he came to the Island."

"And he's still alive."

Sawyer nodded.

"Come on," Jack said, getting to his feet. "We're going to go see him."

_-- Discontinuity --_


	5. Chapter 4: Things Happen

**Chapter 4 – **_**Things Happen**_

It was an all-too-familiar scene for Sayid. Once again they were standing on the low hill a few yards from the beach where they had buried all of their dead. Crosses and simple sticks marked the graves of those who had died. They outnumbered the living by a large margin. And now one more was joining their ranks.

"Sun died because she wanted to see her husband again," Hugo said. As usual, it had fallen to him to lead the informal memorial service. "That's all. She would have done anything for Jin. And she would have done anything for her daughter."

Hugo paused, and then said, more quietly, "I don't know why she decided to come back to this Island. She thought Jin was dead until two days ago. I don't know why she decided to leave Ji Yeon in Seoul. She never told me how Ben and Jack talked her into coming here. I know she didn't like it. She made that clear enough."

Hugo shook his head sadly. "She shouldn't have died. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. She should be with her husband and her daughter. Instead, she got killed by a polar bear."

Then he turned and began walking away, towards the beach. "It's not right," Sayid heard him say. "None of this was supposed to happen."

Silently, everyone else paid their last respects to Sun, and then, one at a time, began to head back towards the camp.

Sayid noticed that Hugo was headed away from the survivor's camp, down the beach. He sprinted after him, and soon caught up to him. "Hugo, wait," he said.

Hugo stopped and turned to face him. "Dude, it's just not right," he said. "Things just aren't happening the way they were supposed to."

"That's not how it works, Hurley," Sayid said softly.

Hugo simply stared at him, so Sayid continued. "After Shannon died, I thought it was my fault. Did you know that? I thought it was because I was being punished. I gave up on ever seeing Nadia again, and so I fell in love with Shannon."

He paused for a moment, and then he said, "And I thought that Shannon died because I wasn't supposed to be with her. I was supposed to be with Nadia. But now I know that the world doesn't work that way. Things don't follow some plan, Hurley. Things happen because they happen. That's all."

"Then what the hell do you think we're doing here?" Hugo shouted.

"What do you mean?"

"Jack – and Ben – told us that we weren't supposed to have left here," Hugo said. "They told us that everything had gone wrong because we left when we were supposed to be here. And that's why we came back. To make things right. To make things go the way they were supposed to go."

"Hugo…" Sayid began, but Hugo cut him off.

"But the thing is, everything had already gone wrong even before we left!" he shouted. "Libby died, and she wasn't supposed to! She should be alive, right here, right now! But she's not. Instead Michael shot her in the stomach, and now she's buried in the sand right next to Sun and Shannon."

He turned away from Sayid and began walking down the beach again. "It's just not right, dude," he said one last time.

Sayid watched Hugo until he was out of sight. Then he turned and headed back towards the camp.

_-- Discontinuity --_

Rose held her daughter still while Juliet held her stethoscope over the little girl's heart. "Sounds good to me," she said, smiling.

The girl, who was all of four months old, giggled back. "Yes, you like your Auntie Juliet, don't you, Bernadette?" she said in a singsong voice. As they did with every decision, Rose and Bernard had argued ceaselessly over what their daughter's name would be. Bernard had wanted to name her Rosina. As usual, Rose won the argument.

They were sitting in the infirmary of what had once been the Dharma Initiative compound. Later, it had belonged to the Others, who had, after the freighter explosion, become universally known as "Locke's people". But they had discovered, a year ago, that Locke's followers had abandoned the place. The people who had been living on the beach until then were quick to relocate to the more comfortable quarters of what Sawyer had christened "New Otherton". It was almost like living back in Miami, Juliet thought.

Almost.

"Wish your momma was half as energetic as you are," Rose said to her daughter. "Is she always going to be this much of a wiggle-worm?"

"I wish I knew," Juliet said. "Want to know something funny?"

Rose raised her eyebrow curiously, so Juliet continued, "Reproductive endocrinology is a subspecialty of obstetrics, and obstetricians don't know a damned thing about babies. We're trained to take care of the mothers, not the children. They have pediatricians for that."

"Oh, _now_ you tell me!" Rose said, laughing. "Well, you're faking it pretty well."

Juliet looked out the window, clearly distracted. "Guess I'd better learn quick, huh?" she said softly.

Rose gave her a concerned look. "Is there something you need to talk about, Juliet?"

"I'm pregnant," Juliet said in a toneless voice.

"Oh," Rose said. "Who's the father?"

"I don't know."

Rose sat up straight. "You don't _know_?"

"I haven't – I mean, I don't _remember_…" She stopped, and threw up her hands. "Honest to God, Rose, I swear I haven't been with any man for a couple of years. But I did the ultrasound myself this morning. I'm carrying, no doubt about it."

Rose glared at her sternly. "You haven't been drinking again, have you?"

"I'm sober eight months now, Rose, you know that." Juliet sighed. "Remember how you felt when I told you that you were pregnant with Bernadette?"

"Yes, well…" Rose began. And then, "A fifty-one-year-old woman getting pregnant is one thing, Juliet, but I knew perfectly well who the father had to be. Immaculate conception? That's something else altogether."

"I know, I know," Juliet said. "None of it makes any sense. I mean, if you believe what Daniel says…" She sighed again. "On the rare occasions that I understand what he's saying, I can't believe a word of it. All that quantum mechanics is just beyond me."

Rose nodded. "Add it to the mysteries around here, I guess. Have you had any episodes lately?"

Juliet shook her head. "Not in months. You?"

"I wound up at Bernadette's fourth birthday party a couple of weeks ago," Rose said. "Apart from that, nada since we moved here."

"Well, if a future you comes up with the answer, have her come see me, OK?"

Rose smiled. "You got it, girlfriend. Come on, Bernadette, let's go see what kind of trouble your daddy's getting himself into."

Juliet helped Rose get out the door, and then went back in to put her instruments away. She didn't have anything else scheduled until the afternoon, when she was supposed to help Sawyer with his physical therapy.

Then she felt the room go strange all around her, and she recognized the by-now-familiar warning signs. "Here I go," she whispered, as a temporal discontinuity episode swept her up –

_-- Discontinuity --_

– and into the jungle.

She was lying, naked, on a flat, bare rock underneath a stand of eucalyptus trees. A small waterfall cascaded over a cliff into a small, shaded pool of water. Juliet knew the place well; she had often come here with Goodwin, in the days when she had been living with the Others, before Oceanic Air flight 815 had crashed on the island and changed everyone's lives forever.

But there was no sign of Goodwin, or of anyone else. Juliet looked around, hoping to at least see where she had left her clothes, but they were nowhere in sight.

She looked down at herself, and froze. She put her hand on her stomach and with one finger traced the telltale scar of a transverse Caesarian section. _That_ was certainly something new. Except that it wasn't. It was a scar that had been healing for at least three or four years.

Juliet rose to her feet. If she couldn't find her clothes, well then, she'd just head back to her house in the former Dharma compound and hope for the best. Of course, at any moment, the episode could pass, and her future self would remember where she had left her clothes, but…

"Looking for something?" a man's voice called out from behind her.

Juliet froze. She knew that voice. But it was impossible that she could be hearing it now.

Slowly she turned and faced the man. He was standing squarely in the middle of the path, aiming a pistol at her.

"No," she said. "Not possible."

"Didn't think I'd catch on, did you?" Ethan Rom asked.

"What?" Juliet was too stunned to think clearly. She was still dealing with the sight of a man she knew to be dead, present with her at a time that absolutely had to be in her future. But there he was. It didn't add up.

"How long have you been sleeping with him?" Ethan demanded. "Since we got together? Since Goodwin died? Before that, even?"

"Who?" Juliet asked. "Ethan, I have no idea…"

"Don't lie to me!" Ethan shouted. "Just tell me: Am I even her father?"

"What? You can't be," Juliet protested. "It's impossible."

Ethan's face convulsed in rage. He raised the pistol, aimed carefully, and fired.

Juliet felt a hot, tearing stab of pain in her stomach, and she stumbled backwards, falling to the ground. She put a hand on her stomach, felt wetness, raised her hand and saw it covered with blood. She watched in shock and incomprehension as Ethan advanced on her, still pointing the pistol at her.

"Goodbye, Juliet," he said grimly. He aimed the pistol until Juliet could see straight down the barrel, and fired –

_-- Discontinuity --_

It was slow going through the jungle. Sawyer's missing foot made the trail difficult for him; he had to hobble along with his walking stick, and had to stop to rest frequently. Jack tried to keep from getting annoyed over their slow progress, but his frustration grew as the hours passed.

"You should have made yourself a wooden leg," he commented at one of their stops late in the afternoon.

"Sayid made one for me," Sawyer said, "but it always hurt like hell. It was easier to get by with the stick."

Jack took a drink of water from an ancient plastic bottle, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "Well, we aren't going to make it today," he said. "We might as well stop here for the night."

"Fine by me," Sawyer said.

Jack sat down on a log and faced Sawyer. "Just what the hell happened around here after I was gone, anyway?" he asked.

Sawyer shrugged. "Well, we kind of didn't know what to do," he admitted. "A lot of us stayed down at the beach, because Locke's crew had moved back into New Otherton, and Rose didn't want anything to do with him." He grinned. "Rose wound up in charge after you left, sort of the same way you did at first. She started making decisions, and everyone else listened to her."

Jack nodded. "Yeah, that sounds familiar," he said wryly. "Then what happened?"

"Then Kate and Sayid and everyone else came back," he said. "Except you."

"Then what?"

"About a week later, Sayid went up to New Otherton to find out what was going on there," Sawyer continued. "Except there wasn't anyone there. They'd all bugged out."

"Where did they go?"

Sawyer shrugged. "Who knows? We never saw any of them again. Anyway, everyone moved up there, and kind of made the best of it. A few people had kids, like I said. Some people died. Some people just – disappeared, the same way the Others did. Nobody's left there now except for Daniel and the kids, who are starting to have kids of their own now."

"Daniel's in charge there?"

Sawyer shook his head. "Nah, Aaron is. He treats Daniel sort of like a cross between a crazy uncle and a guru."

"So what about you?" Jack asked. "Why were you living by yourself down on the beach?"

Sawyer frowned. "That's…" he began. And then, "They didn't need me sticking around up there being a useless old cripple, Jack. They were better off without me."

"Wait, are you saying they kicked you out?"

"No," Sawyer said, staring off into the jungle with a haunted expression in his eyes. "It's just… After Kate died… Look, Jack, everyone I've ever… I'm just bad mojo, Jack," he finally said. "Bad things happen to people around me. They didn't need me."

"You're starting to sound like Hurley," Jack said.

Sawyer groaned. "Oh god, am I really that bad?"

"So what exactly happened to Kate?"

Sawyer shook his head. "No," he said. "No. Jack, it was a dozen years ago, but it's just still too…" He sighed. "Jack, I just can't talk about it, okay?"

"All right, then," Jack said. "Let's find some shelter and get some sleep."


	6. Chapter 5: Out of Nowhere

**Chapter 5 – **_**Out of Nowhere**_

Walt Lloyd stopped beside a small, shaded pool of water beneath a stand of eucalyptus trees. "This is the place," he announced.

Miles looked around dubiously. "Okay, so this is the place," he said. "So what?"

Walt turned and stared down at him. Having reached his full adult growth, he was considerably taller than the balding Asian man, and much stronger. He was also in much better shape – he'd barely broken a sweat during the hike through the jungle, while the older man was out of breath. Miles, intimidated, took an involuntary step backwards.

"This is where Juliet was killed," Aaron said. Aaron, at age twelve, looked completely at home in the jungle; his hair was bleached nearly white by the sun, his skin was deeply tanned, and he wore nothing but short pants made of crude homespun cloth. And he carried a spear that was taller than he was. He was a true creature of the Island, far more than Walt could ever be.

"Yeah, I know," Miles said, trying to regain his usual attitude of smug indifference. "Again, so what?"

"So we don't know who killed her, or why," Walt said. "Or where they went afterwards. And I intend to find out."

"So why drag me way the hell out here?" Miles demanded.

"You know why," Walt snapped. "Do your 'I see dead people' thing and tell us what happened."

Miles rolled his eyes. "Hell, you didn't have to bring me here to do that," he said. "Juliet's buried back at the compound."

"So talk," Walt ordered.

"Okay, okay, you don't have to get all LAPD on me," Miles said. "Juliet was killed by some guy named Ethan."

Walt stared. "_What?_" he nearly shouted.

"Ethan Rome, or something like that," Miles continued. "And yeah, she was pretty surprised to see him."

"Ethan Rom has been dead since before Aaron was born," Walt said. "I watched them bury the body down by the beach."

Miles nodded. "That explains why she was so surprised."

"We're going to find him," Walt said, "and make him pay."

"Well, count me out," Miles said. "Everyone knows you had a crush on our good Doctor Burke since you were a teenager, but I never cared for her all that much."

"Then how come you always followed her when she came here?" Aaron asked.

Walt raised an eyebrow and took a step towards Miles. "What?" he demanded angrily. "You were stalking her?"

"Hey, man, you were the one who said we shouldn't be alone out here," Miles protested. "I was just keeping an eye on her, that's all."

"He'd hide in the trees and watch her," Aaron said. "She liked to take off all her clothes when she went swimming."

Walt just snorted in disgust, while Miles gave Aaron an appraising stare. "Not much gets past you, does it, kid?"

"_Nothing_ gets past me," Aaron boasted.

"That's why you're here," Walt said. "You're the best tracker on the island. The trail you can't follow doesn't exist."

Aaron nodded, accepting the compliment as a simple statement of fact. "It's been four days, but it hasn't rained," he said. "I ought to still be able to follow him." He pointed down the trail. "He came from that direction, and went back the same way."

"Let's go," Walt announced.

But they didn't get far. Less than a mile away, Aaron stopped, and knelt to the ground.

"What is it?" Walt asked.

"That's strange," Aaron said. "The trail just – stops."

Walt knelt down beside him. He could see footprints in the damp earth of the trail, which were clearly those of a large man walking at a quick pace. But between one step and the next, the trail vanished.

"That's not possible," Walt muttered.

"And look," Aaron said. "It starts in the same place, out of nowhere."

Walt shook his head. "So we have a man who can disappear into thin air?"

"Hey, I only know what the tracks tell me," Aaron said. "He didn't leave the trail – that would be so obvious that even Miles could follow it. But he didn't continue along the trail, and he didn't go back either."

Walt glanced over at Miles, who had a peculiar expression on his face. "What's going on?" he asked.

"That's… really weird," Miles said, staring into empty space.

"What's weird?" Walt asked.

"Can't you feel it?" Miles whispered.

Walt shook his head. "I don't feel anything."

"It's like there's…" Miles began, and he put his hand out in front of him, seemingly trying to touch the empty air.

"What?" Aaron asked, looking around warily.

"I think," Miles said slowly, "we ought to get out of here."

Walt nodded, and said, "Yeah, I don't like this. Let's get moving…"

And then, Miles suddenly screamed, _"Run!"_ And he took off down the trail.

"What the…" Walt began. And then, he saw something moving. It looked only like a cloud of black smoke, but it _moved_ in a way that no smoke could. For one thing, it was moving against the wind.

"Walt, run!" he heard Aaron screaming, but he remained rooted to the spot, unable to move. He could only watch, transfixed, as the smoke gathered itself in front of him, thickened, churned in an almost human shape.

Visions began flashing through his mind, a cacophony of disjoint images:

– _the shocked face of Shannon as the bullet hit her in the stomach…  
_– _Libby reached up and stroked Hugo's beard, whispering, "This is how it was supposed to be"…  
_– "_You speak to me as if I were your brother," Yemi accused Eko…  
_– _the sand falling onto Nikki's face as she was buried alive…  
_– "_Goodbye, Juliet," Ethan Rom said grimly, and he aimed the pistol at her forehead…  
_– "_He changed the rules," Ben Linus muttered softly…  
_– "_Get up," Walt ordered Locke. "You have work to do"…  
_– _Jin reached up sightlessly and took Jack's hand, saying, "You have to go back"…  
_– "_You can go now, Michael," Christian Shepherd announced …_

Then the smoke rushed forward and enveloped Walt –

_-- Discontinuity --_

The Dharma barracks looked almost abandoned. The immaculately-trimmed lawns that Jack remembered were now knee-high in weeds, and the jungle had started to encroach along the edges, threatening to overwhelm some of the outlying buildings in a thick cover of vines. Only a few houses near the center still showed any signs of occupation.

"Anyone home?" Sawyer called out. His face was gray and he was nearly exhausted from their two-day trek through the jungle.

The loud _click_ of a shotgun being cocked was the only reply.

Sawyer shook his head. "Come on out, Bernadette," he said. "I know damned well there aren't any shells left for that thing."

A young, slender, brown-skinned woman poked her head around the corner of one of the houses. "Who is that with you?" she demanded.

"This guy?" Sawyer said. "He's the long-lost Doctor Jack Shepherd."

Bernadette came out from behind the building. She was dressed in rough homespun cloth, of the kind Jack had seen the Others wearing when he first met them. "No, seriously, Uncle Sawyer, who is he?"

"Hey, I _am_ being serious," Sawyer said. "Would I lie to you, sweetpea?"

"Yes, you would," Bernadette spat back. She eyed Jack skeptically.

Jack nodded his head and said, "Yeah, he's really telling the truth for once. I'm Jack Shepherd."

"You're younger than I expected," Bernadette said.

"You sound just like your mother," Jack replied.

Bernadette raised an eyebrow. "You knew my mother?"

"Are you kidding?" Jack said. "I was sitting across the aisle from her on Flight 815."

There was a commotion behind Bernadette as several other people came running. One of them, a skinny man with thick white hair and a neatly trimmed beard, looked at them in surprise and said, "Jack? Is that really you?"

"It's really me," he confirmed. "Hi, Daniel."

A tall, heavily-muscled young man with long blonde hair stepped to the front of the small crowd then, and said sternly, "You're late."

Jack looked at the young man curiously. With his deep tan and his spear, he looked like a Hollywood Tarzan. "Do I know you?" he asked.

"You've forgotten me," the blonde man said accusingly.

"No, I…" And then recognition dawned on Jack. _"Aaron?"_

"You've been gone a long time," Aaron growled. "We were expecting you years ago. And now you just show up out of nowhere. Why even bother coming back now?"

Jack threw up his hands in protest. "Hey, I have no idea why so much time passed. I jumped just after Kate. It was only two days ago for me."

Daniel nodded his head in understanding. "Yeah, that's what I was afraid of," he said softly.

Everyone turned to look at him. "What do you mean?" Jack asked.

"A lot of things are – going wrong," Daniel said. "Come on inside, Jack. We need to talk. Things are falling apart pretty badly around here, and we have work to do if we're going to set it right."


	7. Chapter 6: Everything Happens at Once

**Chapter 6 – **_**Everything Happens at Once**_

The house in which they met had once belonged to Benjamin Linus. Later, Locke had lived there, and Sawyer had been a frequent visitor. Now it belonged to Daniel Faraday.

Sawyer was a bit disturbed to realize that the entire population of New Otherton now fit comfortably in Daniel's living room. Daniel's son Desmond sat next to Bernadette Nadler on the sofa, with their two children on the floor in front of them. Rachael Burke sat in a chair, nursing her infant, with Aaron standing behind her. Sawyer was given the big overstuffed recliner, so that he could rest his leg. Jack and Daniel pulled chairs in from the kitchen.

"So what did you mean, things are going wrong?" Jack began.

"Sawyer's told you about all of our temporal discontinuity episodes, hasn't he?" Daniel asked.

"Sort of," Jack said. "As I understand it, you have visions of the past, or sometimes the future?"

Daniel shook his head. "Not exactly. In these episodes, our minds – our entire consciousness – actually travels through time. It's not just a vision – we're able to interact, to change things."

"Wait a minute," Jack said. "You're saying this is actual time travel?"

Daniel nodded. "It's something I was working on at Oxford. One interpretation of quantum mechanics says that it's possible to transmit information from one time to another. And since that's all consciousness is – structured, self-aware information – it's entirely possible to send it through time."

"And you've done this," Jack said skeptically.

"Yes, Jack, I have," Daniel said. I did it first with a rat named Eloise. I constructed a maze, and then I sent her consciousness through time. When I did that, she was able to run the maze perfectly, even though I hadn't trained her on it yet. She was able to access memories of things she hadn't done yet."

"But wait," Jack objected. "If it then already knew the maze, you wouldn't have to train it on it…"

Daniel smiled. "Good point. But when her future consciousness returned to its own time, the memories went with it. So she didn't know it any more." He sighed. "At least, that's how it was _supposed_ to happen…"

"What do you mean, supposed to happen?"

"Eloise died of a cerebral hemorrhage," Daniel said. "Before I had a chance to train her to run the maze. So she never got trained to run it."

"Wait," Jack said uncertainly. "What you're saying is…"

"She was able to access future memories of events that never took place," Daniel said.

"Okay, you've lost me," Jack said. "You're saying this rat remembered doing things that never happened?"

"Right," Daniel confirmed.

Sawyer wasn't really paying attention to all of this – he'd heard it all before, and every time Daniel tried to explain it, it made his head spin. But this time, his head was spinning for a different reason. "Not again," he whispered.

"Uncle Sawyer?" Bernadette asked.

"I should have known this would happen," Sawyer said. "Gotta go…"

_-- Discontinuity --_

He found himself lying in his bed, in his house in New Otherton. And he knew exactly what day it was, and what was about to happen. He also knew that there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

But he had to try anyway. "Kate!" he shouted, reaching for his crutches. He ignored the wooden leg that Sayid had made for him; it would take too long to put on, and besides, it hurt like hell. He hauled himself to a standing position and began hobbling as fast as he could.

"Kate!" he shouted again as he went out his front door. He knew it was futile. He knew he'd be too late. But he headed for Kate's front door anyway.

He shoved the door open, and shouted Kate's name again. He knew exactly where to go. He headed for the bathroom, tried the door, found it locked. He pounded on it, screaming her name. Then he slammed his shoulder against the door, splintering the frame around the lock, forcing it open.

Inside, Kate lay in her bathtub, in a pool of dried blood. The knife she had used to slit her wrists lay on the floor.

Sawyer closed his eyes and groaned. He threw down his crutches and dropped to his knees beside the tub. He took Kate's head in his hands, looked into her bloodless face, saw her glazed eyes. He was too late.

_Again,_ he was too late. He'd relived this day more times than he could count, and every time he was too late.

"Oh, damn it, Kate," he whispered. "Why did you have to do this?"

She'd suffered recurring bouts of depression ever since returning to the Island. Sawyer had helped her through them as best he could. He'd forgotten how many nights he'd spent holding her in his arms as she sobbed uncontrollably. Once before he'd spent hours holding her hands apart, desperately trying to keep the knife she held in one hand away from her wrists, until she finally collapsed from exhaustion. Juliet had prescribed antidepressants for her, but they'd run out not long after Juliet's murder. In the years since, her depression had gotten steadily worse.

"Kate," he whispered again. "How could you go and leave me all alone like this."

He heard more people enter the house, come down the hall, and enter the bathroom behind him. "What happened?" he heard Sayid ask.

He looked up. Sayid was red-faced, panting for breath; he'd obviously run as quickly as he could. Bernard came up behind him and said, "You'd better sit down, Sayid." Bernard knelt beside Sawyer and took Kate's arm, examined her wrist.

He shook his head. "She's been dead for hours, Sawyer," he said. "I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do here."

Sawyer looked up at Bernard, and saw the sorrow in the old man's eyes. He'd said the same thing to Bernard a year before when the cancer had finally taken Rose. He nodded wordlessly, and closed his eyes.

Then Sayid gave an odd gasp. Sawyer's eyes snapped open, and saw a strange, surprised expression on Sayid's face. Sayid clenched his left fist and raised it to his chest. His face turned a sickly shade of gray, and he seemed to have trouble breathing.

"Oh, no," Sawyer said. "No, Sayid, not you too."

But Sayid fell to the floor. Bernard checked Sayid's pulse, and then put his hands on Sayid's chest, beginning CPR.

"No, Sayid," Sawyer said. "It's too soon. Not today. This doesn't happen for years! You can't die now!"

But Sayid's eyes were unfocused, and Bernard continued to try to revive him…

_-- Discontinuity --_

Everyone had gathered around Sawyer's recliner. Bernadette was checking his pulse.

"It's okay," he said hoarsely. "I'm back."

"Where were you?" Daniel asked.

"The day Kate died," he said. "Again."

Daniel nodded silently.

"But it was different this time," Sawyer continued. "Sayid had a heart attack."

"But Sayid didn't have a heart attack that day," Aaron protested. "I remember, I was there. He didn't have his first one until about three years later, I think."

"I know," Sawyer said. "But this time, he had one that day. And I think it killed him."

Everyone turned to Daniel, wordlessly asking for an explanation. "It's worse than I thought," he said.

"What's worse?" Jack said.

"Jack, when Ben Linus moved the Island, it did something to the fabric of space-time around here," Daniel said. "It was already pretty highly stressed, and what Ben did – it seems to have ripped it wide open."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"We've been tracking what goes on in these discontinuities," Daniel said. "I've known for years that they didn't add up to a coherent whole. There are too many inconsistencies, too many impossibilities. Things happen one way one time, a different way the next time. The past, the future – it's all coming unraveled."

"I'm not following you, Daniel."

"Have you ever heard the saying that time is God's way of keeping everything from happening at once?" Daniel asked. "Well, if this goes on, everything _is_ going to happen at once. And I mean _everything_. The past, the future – it won't mean anything any more. We'll have different versions of the same events happening at the same time, and we won't know which is real and which isn't, because they'll _all_ be real. Causality will become completely random. And when that happens…" He shook his head.

"What?" Jack asked.

"The human mind can't take that kind of stress," Daniel said. "When that happens, we all die."


	8. Chapter 7: You Have To Go Back

**Chapter 7 – **_**You Have To Go Back**_

It was time to give Vincent a break, Charlotte Lewis decided. She'd been hiking along the jungle trail for hours, and the old dog had done his best to keep up with her. But he was panting hard, and his hips were starting to wobble, so she took pity on him and found a shady spot beside a stream. The big yellow retriever took a long drink of cool water, and then sat gratefully at Charlotte's feet.

"Good dog," Charlotte said, giving him an affectionate scratch of his ears. She was grateful for the company. Ever since Walt's disappearance, Aaron had insisted that nobody ever leave the safety of the barracks alone. So Charlotte had brought Vincent along when she went to the Orchid station to deliver supplies to Daniel. Her husband was a brilliant scientist, but he needed a keeper; some days he got so involved in his research that he forgot to eat.

Charlotte looked up at the sky, measuring the height of the late-afternoon sun. She had enough time to get back home before dark, and it really wouldn't do to be in the jungle after sundown. Besides, she needed to get young Desmond back from Rose before his bedtime. It was time to be up and moving again.

But then Vincent looked up and gave a surprised whine. Charlotte's head whipped around, trying to see what had startled the dog.

A girl was standing on the path, not twenty feet from them. She was about twelve years old, with long, straight reddish-brown hair and freckled cheeks. She was wearing faded blue jeans and a white t-shirt with the Dharma Initiative logo stenciled on it.

Charlotte opened her mouth, but was unable to say a word. Vincent got slowly to his feet, and walked up to the girl, with his tail wagging excitedly. He sniffed her, and then let her pat his head.

"Hello, Vincent," the girl said. "It's good to see you again, you old dog."

"Annie?" Charlotte asked uncertainly. The girl certainly was the right age, and allowing for the years, looked enough like her daughter that it was certainly possible…

"Hi, mom," Annie said. "I've been looking for you."

Tears welled up in Charlotte's eyes, and she rushed forward, embracing Annie tightly." Oh, Annie," she said, "I've missed you. How… Where…"

"It's a long story, mom," she explained. "I wanted to get back to you so much, but I couldn't for a long time."

"Where have you been all this time?" Charlotte asked.

"Some people took me in," Annie explained. "Don't worry, they've taken good care of me. I can take you to them, if you want…"

_Locke's people_, Charlotte thought silently. "We need to go home first," she said. "Your father – no, he's at the Orchid. And your brother Desmond – oh, you've never even met him, have you?"

"It's all right, mom," Annie reassured her. "They'll be able to come too, when the time is right. But first, I want you to meet the people who I've been living with. They're named Horace and Olivia."

"But how…" Charlotte began.

"Don't worry, mom," Annie chided. "It will be okay. Everything happens exactly the way it's supposed to."

"Oh…" Charlotte hesitated. But this was her daughter, and she was willing to trust her. "All right, Annie. Show me."

"It's not far," Annie said. "This way…"

Charlotte and Vincent followed her into the jungle.

_-- Discontinuity --_

Aaron led the way through the jungle, with Jack and Daniel following closely behind. Aaron had woken the two other men early that morning, insisting that they accompany him on a hike through the forest. Sawyer had wanted to come also, but Aaron had refused, telling him they'd be moving too fast for him to keep up. That had earned Aaron a few choice words from Sawyer, but Aaron had paid him no heed.

"Where exactly are we going?" Jack asked.

"A place where we can get answers," Aaron answered.

"You said that before," Jack complained. "Where is this place?"

"This way," Aaron said, pointing ahead of him.

Daniel grinned and said, "Give it up, Jack. When he gets like this, he's just not going to tell you what you want to know."

"Well, why the hell is he so mad at me?" Jack asked.

Daniel shrugged. "He's always said that it's your fault that everything went wrong, Jack. He never explained how it was your fault, though."

"Great," Jack muttered. "He's just like my dad."

"Don't talk about your father like that," Aaron called over his shoulder. "He was a far better man than you are."

Jack jogged forward and grabbed Aaron's shoulder, forcing the young man to stop and turn to face him. "What the hell do you know about my father?" Jack snarled. "He died before you were born."

Aaron stared at Jack wordlessly, and then pointed. "We're here," he said.

Aaron was pointing to an ancient, dilapidated shack in the middle of a small clearing. "Fine," Jack spat. "Let's get some answers, then."

He started to walk towards the cabin, but Aaron's hand on his shoulder stopped him. Aaron shook his head, and went ahead of Jack to the small cabin.

The cabin's door was on the far side from them. As they rounded the cabin's corner, Jack saw a man sitting in a rickety rocking chair outside the door. The man's face was horribly scarred, and his eyes were empty sockets. His patchy hair was long and mostly gray.

"Hello, Jack," the old man said hoarsely, with an odd accent. "I've been – expecting you."

Jack knelt beside the old man. "Do I know you?"

The old man smiled. "Jin," was his answer.

"Jin?" Jack repeated in disbelief. "But – we all thought you were dead."

"Daniel rescued me," Jin explained.

"I found a lot of people in the water after the freighter exploded," Daniel added. "Jin was probably in the worst shape, but I got him to shore and Juliet somehow kept him alive."

Jack peered at Jin's scarred face. "God, I'm sorry, Jin," he whispered. "I had no idea…"

Jin shrugged. "It happened," Jin said. "Lot of things happened. Not your fault."

Jack frowned. "Aaron here disagrees."

"Aaron not understand," Jin said. "What happen – you could change it, if you were there. But not your fault you not there. You try."

"Jin," Jack said softly. "Why are you out here alone?"

"I – see things, Jack," the old man answered. "I not have eyes, but I see – other things."

"What other things?"

Jin pulled himself slowly to his feet. "Come inside, Jack." He pushed the door open.

Jack went through the door into the shadowy interior of the cabin. Another man sat in a chair inside. He appeared to be in his early sixties, and wore a dark blue suit and white tennis shoes.

"Well, Jack, nice of you to drop by," Christian Shepherd said.

Jack stopped dead in his tracks. "No," he said. "Not possible. You're dead."

Christian shrugged. "It happens to the best of us, Jack," he said.

"No," Jack said. "You can't be here."

"Nevertheless, I am here, Jack," Christian answered, "so you'd better deal with that so that you can get on with what you have to do."

Jack shook his head. "No," he said again. "It's too much. The rest of it – sure, the rest of it is crazy, but I can deal with that. But this…" He turned away. "This is just too much."

"Jack, damn it, don't start cracking up again," Christian said sternly. "A lot of people are depending on you."

Jack slowly turned around. "What do you mean, depending on me?"

Christian shook his head. "Everyone's been telling you ever since you got here, but you just don't listen, do you, Jack?"

"I told you last night, Jack," Daniel said from the doorway. "You weren't supposed to be here. At least, not now. You were supposed to land on that beach with everyone else twenty-three years ago."

"Right," Jack said skeptically. "And you're telling me that if I had, then everything would have been all right?"

"There are no guarantees, Jack," Christian said. "It would depend on you, and what you did. But those people would have a chance, Jack. It would mean there was a chance for things to happen differently."

"Wait a minute," Jack said. "You're talking like there's still some way for me to change what happened."

"There is," Daniel said.

Jin reached out sightlessly and took Jack's hand. "You have to go back," he said.

"Go back? But…" Jack looked around uncertainly.

"Go with Daniel," Christian ordered. "You have work to do."


	9. Chapter 8: What Could Have Been

**Chapter 8 – **_**What Could Have Been**_

It was raining, but Sun-Hwa Kwon hiked onward through the jungle, determined not to stop until she had reached the Others' barracks. Sayid had warned her not to go alone, of course, but she hadn't listened.

Sun had spent much of her life doing as she was told – first by her mother and father, then by her husband. It hadn't been until she'd left the Island that she'd learned to ignore the commands of others and take control of the situation herself. And now she was back on the Island, having foolishly allowed Jack to tell her that she had to do return. And Jack had gone missing, literally vanishing into thin air.

Well, she was done with being told what to do. When she'd learned that her husband was still alive, she had immediately set out to find him, despite warnings from Sayid and Sawyer that it wasn't safe for her to hike through the jungle alone. So far the worst that had happened to her was that she was soaked to the skin.

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped. The weather in this accursed place had never made sense, and Sun wasn't going to waste time trying to figure it out now.

A shaft of sunlight somehow penetrated the thick foliage overhead, illuminating the figure of a man about twenty yards ahead of her on the trail. He was tall and completely bald, dressed in a crisp white t-shirt and khaki pants. Somehow he had managed to avoid getting wet.

"No," Sun whispered to herself in Korean. "He's dead. It's not possible."

"Surprised to see me, Sun?" John Locke asked.

"Your body is in a coffin back on the beach," Sun informed him. "And I don't believe in ghosts."

Locke smiled. "That's not my body, Sun."

"Oh, right," Sun answered. "You kept insisting you were 'Jeremy Bentham'. But I lived on this island with you for months, Locke. I'd know you anywhere. And you were quite dead."

Locke shrugged. "So how do you explain me, then?"

"I don't," Sun said. "_You_ explain you. How can you be standing in front of me when I know you're dead?"

Locke walked towards her, smiling. "Everyone's life is defined by events, Sun. Sometimes by events that are beyond their control. If things happen even a little bit differently, it can change your entire life. The way things are isn't the only way they could have been."

"That doesn't explain anything."

"The John Locke you know was an orphan, Sun," Locke explained. "I spent my entire childhood bouncing around from one foster home to another. But suppose my life had gone differently? Suppose I had been adopted at the age of two months by a couple named Samuel and Marjorie Bentham, and had been renamed Jeremy? Suppose they had given me the loving, stable home I never had? Suppose this very wealthy couple had sent me to the best private schools? Suppose I had gone on to college, eventually earning my doctorate and becoming a professor of philosophy at UCLA?"

"But that didn't happen," Sun objected.

"But it could have," Locke pointed out. "I could have become a totally different person. And that's who you met in Los Angeles – not me, but the person I could have been, if my life had gone differently."

Sun shook her head. "Nonsense. You're wasting my time."

"Let me give you another example of what could have been," Locke offered. "Jack Shepherd was supposed to come back to the Island with you, wasn't he? But something happened, and he's not here. But suppose he was? Suppose he hadn't gotten lost, but had landed on that beach with the rest of you?"

Sun eyed Locke warily. "So? What if he had? It wouldn't change anything. I'd still be on my way to find my husband."

Locke shook his head. "But not alone, Sun, and not now. Jack would have talked you into waiting until he and Sayid could go with you. So you wouldn't be here alone in the jungle, and unarmed."

Sun's eyes went wide, and she took a step back, away from Locke. But he simply shook his head, and continued. "As a result, you'd find Jin, instead of being killed by a polar bear."

"How do you know all of this?" Sun asked, her voice trembling in fear.

Locke laughed at her. "Oh, Sun," he said. "Do you really think I'm John Locke?"

Sun had heard enough. She turned and began to run away from Locke as fast as she could. But she had gone only ten steps before the white bulk of a giant bear came crashing out of the underbrush, swinging a giant paw at her head –

_-- Discontinuity --_

Jack, Daniel, Sawyer and Jin marched onward through the midday heat. Their path through the jungle seemed strangely familiar to Jack. He'd taken such a trek on his last day on the Island, with Locke and Hugo. "We're going to the Orchid station, aren't we?" he finally asked Daniel.

"It's a spaciotemporal research laboratory," Daniel said by way of confirmation. "I've been going there for years. The Dharma physicists were way ahead of the rest of the scientific community in some areas."

"Such as, presumably, time travel," Jack said.

Daniel stopped, and grinned. "Yeah, that's a big one," he said. "I was doing experiments with the transmission of information between different time-frames at Oxford, but years before that, they'd managed to translate actual mass."

"Say that again?" Jack said, confused.

"Material objects, Jack," Daniel said. "_Living_ material objects, no less. Time-travelling rabbits."

"And you think you can do the same thing?"

"I've done it," Daniel said, a proud smile crossing his face. "Their equipment needed some repair, but once I had it working – well, it's actually quite simple."

Jack nodded, looking doubtful. "So what have you managed to do, exactly?"

"I sent a rabbit sixteen seconds into the future," Daniel said.

"Sixteen seconds?"

"Don't worry, Jack," Daniel said. "Twenty-three years is as easy as sixteen seconds. It just takes a bit more power, that's all. And there's no shortage of power at the station."

"Besides, Jack," Sawyer added, "the crazier something sounds on this island, the more likely it is to work, right?"

Jack laughed. "I guess so," he said.

"It will work," Jin said solemnly.

Jack eyed Jin curiously. "There you go," Sawyer said. "Jin's always right. Don't ask how, or Daniel might start explaining it to you, and then you really won't understand it. But Jin always knows how something is going to turn out."

"Nonlinear spaciotemporal perception," Daniel added helpfully.

"See what I mean?" Sawyer said, grinning hugely.

"Let's just get on with it," Jack grumbled.

They climbed a steep hillside to the entrance to the station. The Orchid had been disguised as a botanical research center, and when Jack had first seen it, it was already overgrown from years of neglect. But now the vines and shrubs had run riot, forming a dense tangle of vegetation surrounding the station. But there was a cleared path leading into the thicket, straight to the entrance to the real Orchid station.

Jack stopped dead in his tracks. Standing in front of the entrance, blocking it, stood a tall, bald man carrying a hunting rifle.

"Hello, Jack," John Locke said. "Surprised to see me?"


	10. Chapter 9: Work to Do

**Chapter 9 – **_**Work to Do**_

Everyone held perfectly still for a moment. Locke held the rifle in both hands, pointed away from the others, but the implied threat was obvious.

Jack finally broke the silence. "Of course I'm not surprised, John. I just had a nice long heart-to-heart chat with my dead father, so why should I be surprised to see you?"

Locke smiled and appeared to relax. "Every once in a while you do manage to figure things out, Jack." He looked back at Jack's companions, and added, "Well, look what we have here. A blind man, a cripple, and a schizophrenic. You do know how to choose your friends, Jack."

"'Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind," Sawyer quoted.

"_King Lear_," Locke said with a smile. "One of my favorites."

Jack scowled. "I wish I had time to catch up, John, but I have work to do, and I'd just as soon get it over with."

Locke shifted the rifle in his hands. "I can't let you do that, Jack."

"And why not?" Jack challenged.

"There's more going on here than you realize."

"So explain it to me, then."

"Jack," Locke said, "there's a war going on. Two sides, one light, one dark, both fighting for control. It started long before we got to this island, but we're both a part of it now."

"So which side are you on, then?" Jack asked.

"Which side are _you_ on, Jack?" Locke countered. "I don't think you know. And I don't think you have any idea what you're about to do."

Jack shook his head. "Nice try, John. But I know exactly what I'm about to do. I have to set things right."

"And you think it's that easy?" Locke asked. "Just go on back to where Benjamin Linus said you were supposed to be, and everything will be all right? You think that's going to fix everything?"

"Do you think I haven't asked myself the exact same question, John?" Jack shouted. "Ever since I first came to this damned island, people have been looking to me to make everything go right. And everyone seems to have a different idea of what that might be, and nobody's been shy about telling me, either." He took a step forward. "But let me tell you something, John. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the whole mess. I don't care about your damned war. All I know is that the people I care about have suffered, and died, and I wasn't there to help them. Well, maybe I can't help them, John. Maybe there's nothing I can do. But at least I can try."

Locke gave Jack a disappointed smile and said, "Jack, let me show you what's going to happen if you do go back."

_-- Discontinuity --_

"What?" Jack asked, struggling to sit up.

"Stay still," Juliet said softly. "It could make things worse."

Jack looked around, confused. He was staring at a ragged blue tarp covering a shack made of driftwood and pieces of airplane fuselage. He could hear the surf breaking on the beach outside.

"What happened?" Jack asked, confused. He struggled to move. "Juliet," he said quietly, "I can't feel my toes."

"Your parachute didn't open properly," Juliet said. "The lines got tangled, and…" She looked at Jack sadly. "I'm sorry, Jack. I don't know if the damage is permanent yet. But you came down hard on some rocks, and your back is broken."

Jack absorbed that in silence for a long moment. Then he asked, calmly, "How long have I been unconscious?"

"Almost three days," Juliet said.

Jack closed his eyes tightly, struggling for control. "Then it was all just a –"

_-- Discontinuity --_

"– dream," he whispered hoarsely.

He found himself sitting in the main room of the Swan station, which for so long he'd known as "the Hatch". But it had been destroyed – he'd seen the wreckage. How could he be back inside it?

He heard the familiar _blip, blip_ of the station's alarm system, warning him that the 108-minute timer was about to expire. He stood – there was no sign of any paralysis, or any injury to his back – and went slowly into the station's communication room.

The monitor and keyboard were there, exactly as he remembered. Sitting in front of them was Hugo – but not as he remembered. Hugo was even larger; Jack judged that he now weighed five hundred pounds at least. His hair was longer and streaked with gray, and his beard reached nearly to his waist. He looked, Jack thought, like a strange cross between Buddha and Jerry Garcia.

"Dude," Hugo said, without even turning his head to look at Jack. "Looks like we're not all that came back."

Hugo began typing the numbers on the keyboard as the alarm began blaring louder –

_-- Discontinuity --_

Jack found himself in the examination room of the Dharma barracks. He'd done some work there during the days he'd spent living among the Others, waiting for Ben to keep his promise to get Jack off the Island. But the room now seemed shabbier, almost neglected, with paint peeling from the walls and a faint layer of dust on the cabinets.

"I'm sorry, Daniel," he heard Juliet say. "There was nothing I could do."

The examination table had been set up for a delivery, and the pale, still body of Charlotte Lewis lay atop it. Daniel Faraday sat in a chair at the head of the table, with his eyes shut tightly in grief. Juliet slowly pulled a sheet over Charlotte's body, covering it.

"Damn," Juliet whispered, walking slowly over to Jack, stripping off her surgical mask. "I really hoped – Jack, I've never managed to get a pregnancy to full term on this island before," she said, nearly as grief-stricken as Daniel. "To lose them both like this…" She stopped, and gestured towards a small, blanket-wrapped form beside Charlotte. The newborn was ominously still.

"Nothing's going right, Jack," Juliet whispered, "and I can't seem to do anything about it."

_-- Discontinuity --_

Now Jack was in the jungle, alone on a trail he didn't recognize. "What the hell is going on?" he asked himself.

He heard a rustling in the foliage behind him, and turned around to face it. Standing not ten feet from him was Michael, pointing a pistol directly at him.

"What –" Jack began, but Michael fired before he could finish his question. Jack felt a sudden, searing pain in his chest, and he fell to the ground, hands clutching at the wound just below his heart.

"_Dad?"_ he heard a stunned voice call. Michael turned, and instantly fired two shots. Walt stared at his father in horror, and then slowly toppled over as blood began spurting from his stomach.

"_Waaalt!"_ Michael screamed. As his vision started to fail him, Jack dimly saw Michael raise the pistol to his own head. As everything went black, Jack heard a shot –

_-- Discontinuity --_

Kate was kneeling before a rough wooden cross in the beach graveyard, her face lined with despair. "Jack," she said, looking up, "we should never have come back."

_-- Discontinuity --_

A large polar bear stood on the path directly in front of Jack. Incongruously, it had a large number 15 painted on its side in bright red.

Jack slowly backed away. Then, glancing behind him, he saw another, equally large white bear, also with a red number 15 on its side.

He head a noise to his left. There was yet another huge bear, also with the number 15.

Jack stood perfectly still. The bears all growled simultaneously, and took a step towards him.

"Don't let them touch each other!" Jack heard someone shout. He saw a middle-aged Asian man in a white lab coat come running up the trail.

The three bears abruptly lost interest in Jack and charged the strange man. Before he could turn to run, one of them bit down on his right hand, and the man screamed in agony –

_-- Discontinuity --_

"Somebody shot her," Sayid said. "I don't know who. But I found Juliet's body about a mile from here."

_-- Discontinuity --_

Jack's eyes came open just as the first shovelful of sand hit him in the face. He was lying in a shallow grave, and he struggled to cry out, but could not –

_-- Discontinuity --_

"Jack," Eko said softly, "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."

_-- Discontinuity --_

– and he was once again staring at John Locke in front of the Orchid station.

"Nice try, John," Jack said. "But if you wanted me to believe that's what's going to happen, you could have at least made it consistent."

Locke shook his head again. "Jack, sometimes you really are slow on the uptake. Didn't you understand what Daniel said? Time is coming apart at the seams. And if you go back, it won't fix it – it will just make it worse. There won't be any consistency, any such thing as logical cause and effect. You'll have so many different possible histories competing with each other that time and space will completely collapse. There will be nothing but primal chaos, engulfing the entire world." He looked at Jack with an ominous glare, and asked, "Do you really want to be responsible for that, Jack?"

"And how do you know this?" Jack challenged.

"Jack, Jack, Jack," Locke said sadly. "Do you really still think I'm John Locke?"

"Not for a minute," Jack said. "Any more than I believe that the man I spoke with this morning was my father's ghost. I don't know who, or what, you are, but you aren't the John Locke I knew."

Locke gave Jack a surprised grin. "Well, it looks like you can figure out what's going on if somebody waves it around under your nose long enough."

"And you screwed up, John," Jack continued. "Just like you always did. Somehow, somebody from the other side managed to slip me a message while you were trying to scare me. I'm not fooled, John. And I'm going inside that station, so that I can finish this. So get out of my way."

"You're still forgetting one thing, Jack," Locke said, raising the rifle to his shoulder. "I have a gun, and you don't."

"John –" Jack began, but Locke raised the rifle and aimed it at Jack's forehead. A shot rang out –

And Locke, with a surprised look on his face, fell to his knees.

Jack turned to look behind him. Jin was holding a pistol, aimed straight at Locke.

"Nice shootin', Deadeye!" Sawyer said, grinning.

Jin lowered the gun. "Locke was lying," he said slowly. "You must go back."

"I know, Jin," Jack said. Then he walked towards Locke, and knelt by his side.

Locke was still breathing, but his respiration was shallow and ragged. The bullet had entered just to the right of the sternum, puncturing the lung and possibly lodging in the spinal cord.

"How the hell could a blind man do that?" Locke gasped hoarsely.

"Don't ask me," Jack said. "You're the one with all the answers, remember?"

Locke gasped, spat blood, tried to sit up, and then collapsed, lifeless, on the ground.

Jack checked him for respiration, but found nothing. He shook his head sadly, and closed Locke's eyes.

And then, thick black smoke began flowing from out of Locke's mouth and nostrils.

"Jack," Sawyer said, but Jack was already on his feet.

"Let's get going," Jack said. The four men made their way to the elevator as quickly as they could.

It was a long trip down. About halfway, they began feeling an ominous shaking. "What's that?" Sawyer asked.

"Something trying to get in at the top of the shaft," Daniel said. "We don't have any time to waste."

At the bottom, the elevator let them out in a cool, dimly-lit corridor. The shaking grew steadily worse as they made their way to a small room filled with a variety of electronic equipment.

"Just a minute while I power things up," Daniel said.

"Where does the power come from?" Jack wondered aloud.

"Temperature differential between the surface and the bottom," Daniel answered. "It's almost seventy Kelvin. You can get a hell of a potential difference out of that."

Sawyer grinned. "Ask a silly question," he said.

"It's not a silly question," Daniel countered. "There, we're ready."

A massive tremor knocked all of them off of their feet. "In there, Jack!" Daniel shouted as they all stood back up. He pointed towards a small metal booth set into one wall. "I wish we had time to say good-bye properly, but we don't!"

Jack nodded, and dove into the booth as another tremor shook the laboratory. The door slid shut behind him. "Good luck, Jack!" he heard Sawyer shout. There was a loud hum, a bright flash of light –

_-- Discontinuity --_

In the midst of the celebration welcoming the Oceanic Six back to the Island, Juliet suddenly asked, "Where's Jack?"

The parachutists looked around in confusion. "Didn't he jump?" Hugo asked.

"He was supposed to be behind me," Kate said.

"He was," Sayid insisted. "I saw him."

Kate stared up at the sky, searching for an errant parachute. "Where did he go?" she asked.

"Here I am," she heard Jack say. He was walking towards them, smiling hugely.

"Jack!" several people shouted at once, and he found himself in the middle of an enormous group hug.

"What happened, Jack?" Sayid asked.

"Gust of wind hit me at the last minute, and carried me down the beach," Jack explained. "I landed just beyond those rocks."

"Well, we're glad you could make it," Rose said, hugging him fiercely.

Jack looked around, and caught Daniel Faraday's eye. Daniel grinned, and flashed Jack a thumbs-up.

_He knows_, Jack thought, smiling.

"Hey, I'd love to stay and celebrate all day," Jack told the rest of them. "But we need to get moving."

"Where are we going?" Juliet asked.

"The Dharma barracks," he answered.

"You mean New Otherton?" Sawyer asked in disbelief. "Locke's people are there, and we don't exactly mix with them."

Jack shook his head. "No, they aren't there," he said. "I have it on good authority that they moved out a few weeks ago. It's vacant, and waiting for us."

Kate looked at Jack skeptically, but nodded. "If you say so, Jack," she said.

Jack grinned. "Come on, everyone," he said. "We have work to do."

They all followed Jack into the jungle.

_**The End**_


End file.
